I have taught at universities in the US, the UK, Germany and China and I have published in numerous academic journals. I was active in the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s demanding equal rights for Blacks. NOW I SUPPORT CIVIL RIGHTS AND DEMAND EQUAL RIGHTS FOR ALL CITIZENS, INCLUDING WHITES AND MEN.
(For some of my more formal writing, go to http://www.anthonyflood.com/murray.htm you can find photos, etc.) For most of my writing, see Tulane University's Library, Special Collections.

Monday, March 31, 2014

In preparation for the Democratic Party Convention to be held in 2016, a large group of Democratic Party activists held a conference on Diversity. The following report demonstrates the Unity through Diversity theme of the Democrats.-----Hugh Murray

Ivan Fernando, Diversity Chronicle, March 13, 2014

No one could have possibly predicted that an event organized with the noble intention of trying to bring people of all races, genders, sexual orientations and religions together could tragically explode in violent infighting. Unfortunately, that is just what happened to the Diversity Conference last weekend. The conference, which was originally planned for four days, was forced to conclude early on its first night as police were called in by outside observers to end the fighting that tragically erupted. The episode was sadly symptomatic of a larger problem within the American progressive community: the failure to adopt a truly egalitarian worldview that really celebrates and respects all kinds of diversity, recognizing all forms of diversity, racial, sexual and religious as inherently equal in every way!

Held near Nashville, Tennessee, shortly before the intolerant and racist American Renaissance conference, the Diversity Conference included progressives, anti-racists, feminists, LGBT rights activists, civil rights activists and members of religious minority groups from the Black and Salafi Muslims to Reformed and Humanistic Jews. The purpose of the conference was to prove the American Renaissance racists wrong and to highlight the many benefits of living in a diverse and multi-cultural society. The goal was to show the world that peaceful co-existence and tolerance are possible and will lead to a better, safer and more enlightened world for everyone.

It is difficult to pinpoint how the fighting started but it seems to have originated in an unanticipated conflict between lesbian feminists and male Muslim activists. It is both tragic and remarkable how easy it is for some people to forget that we are all the same inside. We must never forget that, and we must never forget that we are all fighting for the same principles and against the very same enemies. It is very important that we work together and present a united front against hate.

A new and creative workshop offered free “privileged white” tattoos, done on the foreheads of privileged whites who have taken their first steps into a larger world by recognizing and condemning their own white privilege in a public and permanent way. The forehead tattoos will serve as a daily reminder of the ugly persistence of white privilege and racism even in 2014 and under the presidency of Barack Obama, our first African-American president. It is a tragic fact that white racism has only grown over time in America since the days of slavery and Jim Crow.

Another popular, groundbreaking, and especially meaningful workshop at the Diversity Conference gave white attendees small whips and encouraged them to scourge and flagellate their white skin in solidarity with the oppression, beatings, whippings and torture of African-American slaves by whites. Several attendees praised the flogging workshop as a transformative and empowering experience for them. Unique and interesting BDSM toys and paraphernalia were also offered for sale to raise money for next year’s conference.

Later that evening, keynote speaker Adriana Loeb-Horowitz began her talk, she noted that as long as men have existed they have oppressed women. Offering her own solution to the problem, she suggested “the abolition of the male gender through compulsory castration and the imprisonment of most men, so as to smash the growing rape culture forever. If the human species was entirely female, and reproduced through some kind of new cloning or artificial insemination technology that negated men, the world would be an infinitely more peaceful place. Surely, whatever methods are necessary, no matter how seemingly brutal, would be justified by the overriding necessity of the project.”

Some in the audience actually booed Loeb-Horowitz’s speech out loud and shockingly called her “insane.” Others disgustingly referred to her as a “dumb woman.” These remarks were not limited to a few isolated individuals, but expressed the views of many Black and Salafi Muslims, Gay men and Hispanics in attendance. Sadly the war on women is very far from over as the above remarks prove. All too often, even in progressive circles women and their ideas are ridiculed and singled out for attack by male bullies. The behaviour of many men in the audience made me ashamed to be male.

Imam Muhammed Bukhari of the Egyptian Salafi Federation condemned Loeb-Horowitz’s speech before she was able to finish speaking. Interrupting the speech, the Imam announced that as soon as his return flight to Egypt would land, he planned on issuing a fatwa calling for her death. “This kind of poisonous anti-male hatred stems from a sick form of Judeo-Masonic-Atheism, the ugly black venom of which runs through every strata of Kafir American dog society. This hideous creature has chosen to become a lesbian out of her sheer hatred of men. She now desires to end the male gender in some kind of deviant implausible fantasy. If you can’t stone her, please shoot her or cut her head off, brave soldiers of Allah do not suffer this lesbian witch to live! Take up glorious Jihad, fight for your religion!” The Imam went on to cite several verses apparently from the Qur’an, Hadith and even the Bible, attempting to distort scripture and Islam, the religion of peace, to justify his apparent call for murder and intolerance.

Loeb-Horowitz responded to Imam Bukhari by stating “This is exactly the kind of violence that is an inseparable part of the male gender and always will be! I was being too gracious, we really need to exterminate the entire male gender! We need someone like a female Stalin to rise up and solve the male problem once and for all!” Upon hearing this several gay men in attendance openly stood up in defiance and walked out of the conference, some announcing that they were protesting what they called a “blatantly offensive sexist” speaker. A contingent of Black Muslims also objected profusely, their spokesperson Amalek Abdullah noted that “We never would have attended this conference had we realized it was full of sexually immoral individuals, male hatred, hedonistic drug addicted hippy rejects and assorted freaks of all kinds. This isn’t a diversity conference, it is some kind of sick and abhorrent freak show!”

Surprisingly, the Black Muslims and Egyptian Salafis also began to fight. The Egyptians apparently began referring to the Blacks as “abeeds” (slaves in Arabic) and stated that their form of Islam was inauthentic and false. The Egyptian clerics threatened the Black Muslims with eternal hell, as the Black Muslims responded threatening the Salafi Egyptians with hell and condemning them as racists and white supremacists, ignorant of true Islam. The question of whether or not the great Prophet Muhammed (Peace and blessings be upon him) was black or Arab was hotly contested by both sides.

About the only speech the conference attendees could support without any dissension was by Prof. Noel Ignatiev. The professor’s talk entitled “Treason To Whiteness Is Loyalty To Humanity, Betray Your Race Today” received vociferous applause from almost all in attendance. In his talk the brave professor excoriated the hypocrisy of many privileged white liberals, who profess to love African Americans and diversity yet who choose to live in largely segregated white communities. Ignatiev rightly urged progressives to move to black ghettos and to the inner cities, if for no other reason than to ensure that one’s children are exposed to the benefits of diversity and to ensure that they do not grow up to embrace racist views. Surely, no reasonable white person who really lived among Blacks, Hispanics or Gays or Lesbians would fail to see their innate virtues as well as the incalculable benefits of diversity.

While acknowledging that inner city schools often fall short of academic standards elsewhere in the nation, Professor Ignatiev rightly blamed white people for their lagging scholastic performance.

Unfortunately, during the question and answer session after his speech, the Salafi Muslims became very hostile and denounced Professor Ignatiev once he admitted he was in fact an atheist. “There is no God but Allah, and Muhammed is His Prophet. Kneel before Allah or perish in the eternal hell fire! You are an anti-Zionist, so you say, but what good are you? You deny God the most holy! You are lower than a pig!” Imam Bukhari stated angrily as he spat in Ignatiev’s direction.

A couple of Jews in attendance with ties to the Jewish Defence League stated that they would refuse to talk with any Muslims or Arabs present or listen to their speeches, as long as they denied the right of the state of Israel to exist, and for it to exist as an exclusively Jewish state forever. Harsh words were exchanged between JDL sympathizers and Muslims, after which a fist fight broke out between the rival groups. A group of transgendered men with tie-dyed shirts on, wearing large peace sign necklaces tried to position themselves between the rival groups urging peace, love and tolerance, until assailants on both sides began pelting them with rocks, incapacitating and in some cases seriously injuring them. In a very sad and almost pitiful display, fanatical Jews and Muslims shared a mutual transphobic hate-crime, appearing to have only a shared bigotry in common.

As if there wasn’t enough conflict already for one day, several black attendees walked out, and still others become violent, during the speech by Martin Hernandez representing the Aztlan Freedom Front. A Chicano Nationalist group dedicated to reclaiming the so-called “American” southwest for Aztlan. Hernandez called for more immigration from Mexico and stated that no one works as hard as Mexican day labourers. Several black nationalists in attendance objected and booed. Some shouted that Mexicans steal jobs from blacks and should go back to Mexico. To this accusation Hernanedez shouted, “Go back to Africa, this is our land! This is a bronze continent and Aztlan is a Mestizo nation. You can leave, it belongs to us! Get out!” Prompting screams and curses from blacks in attendance. Some were even seen hurling rocks and broken beer bottles at Hernandez.

What was to be a four day celebration of diversity of sex, sexual orientation, race, and religion degenerated into a violent orgy of fighting, intolerance, judgement, and even shockingly overt racism! We must strive ever harder to overcome racism, sexism, homophobia, Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. We must recognize that these evils persist even among those of us who are the most progressive. If even progressives can be this racist, sexist and homophobic, imagine how truly sick our enemies are? Their evil and hateful nature must be beyond description, it is too frightening to contemplate.

I assume this is a spoof, but not too far from the reality of political correctness in the US.----Hugh Murray This was taken from the American Renaissance site.

Saturday, March 29, 2014

There is a wonderful film about the city of Lahore, "Earth 1947." It might give some background. However, in headlines round the world, one reads of Muslims killing Christians and non-believers in Sudan, in Nigeria, in central Africa, in Ethiopia, in Mombai, in Indonesia, in SE Asia, in Russia, in rebel held Syria, in Egypt, in Iraq, in Iran, in western China, in Afghanistan, and even on the streets of London. They do it inspired by a violent, evil religion. It is time for all of us to stand together and say - we insult Mohammed, the prophet of violence and murder, we insult Mohammed, we insult Mohammed, we insult Mohammed. We are the enemy of your evil religious fanaticism and violence and lack of freedom.-----Hugh MurrayThe following story is from Breitbart.

PAKISTANI CHRISTIAN SENTENCED TO DEATH FOR INSULTING MOHAMMED

A Christian man has been sentenced to death for blasphemy by a Pakistani court after allegations that he insulted the Prophet Mohammed lead to rioting in a Christian neighbourhood of Lahore last year.

26-year-old Sawan Masih, who is father of three children, was convicted of uttering the insult during a conversation with a Muslim friend. A mob then burned two churches and dozens of Christian homes in the eastern Pakistani city.

The Times newspaper says that if this sentence is carried out, it will be the first execution under Pakistan's blasphemy laws.

Masih maintains that he was falsely accused as part of a plot by Muslim businessmen to clear Christians from their Lahore neighbourhood and turn the area into a profitable industrial estate. He is expected to appeal against the ruling.

Pakistan has become infamous in recent years for mob violence and vigilantism in response to any perceived insult to Islam or the Prophet Mohammed.

Such is the stigma against anyone accused of blasphemy that the family of a Christian girl falsely accused of burning pages of the Koran was forced to leave the country, despite a Muslim cleric later being arrested for making the story up.

In 2011, the relatively liberal governor of Punjab was killed by his own body guard for suggesting the blasphemy law be repealed. A Christian politician who had also criticised the law was shot dead two months after.

Critics of the law say that it is often abused to settle personal disputes and that members of minority groups are especially vulnerable.

Pakistan is the only country where the punishment for blasphemy is death or life imprisonment.

Sunday, March 23, 2014

Earlier I had posted a piece on how Democrats suppress the
votes. And buy votes from the homeless
shelter. Not satisfied with cheating and
destroying the democratic process one way, this shows how the anit-democratic
Democrats destroy democracy in other ways.
The woman at the center of this article was a poll worker, one who
should have guaranteed that the voting was honest. But there is nothing honest about the
Democrats. No wonder, she is honored by
her fellow Democrats. No wonder, some
wards voted 100% for Obama. Surprise it
was not 115% of the registered voters!----Hugh Murray

Ohio Democrats, still
pushing theirphony “voter suppression” meme, kicked off a campaign
tonight to put a constitutional amendment on the November ballot. They even
brought in Al Sharpton for support.

Sharon Coolidge of theCincinnati Enquirer tweeted
coverage of the event, and it seemed to be the same tired arguments that have
been repeated endlessly, until she reportedthis:

Remember Melowese Richardson?

She was a poll worker who used her position tovote for Obama multiple times.She is
one of the few who ever gets caught for voter fraud and was sentenced to five
years in prison.

CINCINNATI -A long-time poll worker
who admitted to illegal voting was sentenced to five years in prison Wednesdayand received a rebuke from the judge, who cited her criminal
past. Melowese Richardson, 58, pleaded no contest to four counts of illegal
voting in 2009, 2011 and 2012. One count charged her with voting for her
sister, who is in a coma. Four other counts were dropped in exchange for
Richardson's plea. During a passionate sentencing speech, Hamilton County Judge
Robert P. Ruehlman laid out a laundry list of past charges against Richardson -
from witness harassment to theft to assault - as Richardson stood before him.
"I'm Melowese Richardson. I take the law into my own hands. I do what I
want,"Ruehlman said. "It's
about criminal activity. You are a criminal."

That was only eight
months ago. For some reason, she has already been released. At an event that
was all about voting law, Ohio Democrats invited a person guilty of multiple
counts of voter fraud to speak – to "welcome her back" and
applaud her. They invited her up to the stage, like some sort of hero.

Democrats seem to oppose any changes in the law that make it
harder to cheat. Their embrace of Melowese Richardson shows where their
intentions actually lie.

And
from Daily Caller via Drudge, more info---Hugh

Six-time Obama
voter’s group received Obama administration grant

2:13 AM 03/24/2014

The
woman who admitted to voting for President Barack Obama six times worked for
and sat on the board of a group that received an Obama administration
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) grant.

Melowese Richardsonadmitted in 2013to
voting six times for Obama’s re-election while working as a poll worker in
Hamilton County, Ohio. Initially convicted on state voter fraud charges and
sentenced to five years in prison, Richardson served eight months before the
George Soros-funded Ohio Justice and Policy Center helped lessen her sentence
to probation. Richardson appeared last weekat a rallywith
some Ohio Democrats and Al Sharpton, who publicly gave her a hug.

Richardson worked
for and sat on the board of a Cincinnati-based environmental activist group
called Communities United for Action, which received an EPA grant and attended
a conference with former Obama administration Labor Secretary Hilda Solis.

“My name is
Melowese Richardson and I work for a group called CUFA, Communities United for
Action. We passed the first environmental protection ordianance in the country
here in Cincinnati and I love to participate with this group because of their
repowering America,” Richardson said in a May 15, 2010 video for the Repowering
America initiative, which was launched in 2008 by The Climate Reality Project
in a speech by former Democratic vice president Al Gore.....

Article Five commits us to war if the territory of any of these tiny Baltic nations is violated by Russia.

From World War II to the end of the Cold War, all three were Soviet republics. All three were on the other side of the Yalta line agreed to by FDR, and on the other side of the NATO red line, the Elbe River in Germany.

No president would have dreamed of waging war with Russia over them. Now, under the new NATO, we must. Joe Biden was affirming war guarantees General Eisenhower would have regarded as insane.

Secretary of State John Kerry says that in the Ukraine crisis, "All options are on the table." John McCain wants to begin moving Ukraine into NATO, guaranteeing that any Russian move on the Russified east of Ukraine would mean war with the United States.

Forty members of Congress have written Kerry urging that Georgia, routed in a war it started with Russia over South Ossetia in 2008, be put on a path to membership in NATO.

Following Russia's annexation of Crimea, other voices are calling for expanding NATO to bring in Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova, and for moving U.S. troops and warplanes into Poland and the Baltic republics.

President Obama says, "All options are on the table" if Iran does not give us solid assurances she is not building a bomb. Members of Congress support U.S. military action against Iran, if Tehran does not surrender even the "capability" to build a bomb.

We are committed by treaty to defend the Philippines. And if China acts on its claim to the southern islands of the South China Sea, and starts a shooting war with Manila's navy, we are likely in it.

Is this not an awful lot on Uncle Sam's plate?

Is America really prepared to fight all of these wars that we are obligated by treaty to fight?

The national recoil at attacking Syria, for crossing Obama's "red line"last summer and using poison gas, suggests that there is a vast gulf between what America is obligated by treaty to do, and what the American people are willing to do in sending their soldier sons into a new war.

Indeed, the latest mantra of the war hawks, "no boots on the ground," is meant to reassure the nation that in our next war, unlike Afghanistan and Iraq, there will be no more planeloads of dead coming into Dover, no new generation of Wounded Warriors arriving at Walter Reed.

Soon, the United States is going to have to come to terms with this reality -- the unwillingness of the American people to fight the wars they are committed to fight by the American government.

Yet, the immediate problem is how to avoid a military confrontation or clash with Vladimir Putin's Russia over Crimea, which almost no American wants.

Apparently, the West has decided to start down the sanctions road.

But where does that road lead?

While sanctions may cripple the Russian economy, will they break Putin? Did they break Castro? Did they break Kim Il Sung or Kim Jong Il? Did they break the Ayatollah? Does Putin look like someonewho will respond to an economic squeeze by crying uncle?

Moreover, in this age of interdependence that America did so much to launch, sanctions are a two-edged sword.

If Ukraine cuts off oil, gas, water and electricity into a seceded Crimea, whose tourist trade is drying up, this could provoke Putin into invading Eastern Ukraine and seizing the lone land bridge onto the peninsula.

It could provoke Russia into cutting off imports from Ukraine, turning off the oil and gas, and calling in Ukraine's debts. This would precipitate a default by Ukraine, without more Western aid than the $35 billion it is now estimated Kiev will need by 2016.

Are House Republicans willing to vote America's share of that vast sum and make Ukraine a recipient of U.S. foreign aid roughly equal to what we provide annually to Israel and Egypt?

And if we severely sanction Russia, she could cut off oil and gas to Europe, cause a recession in the eurozone, and move closer to China.

Sunday, March 16, 2014

CIA ROGUES AND THE
KILLING OF THE KENNEDYS: How and Why US Agents Conspired to Assassinate JFK and
RFK (Skyhorse Publishing. 2013)

By PATRICK NOLAN,
Foreword by Dr. Henry C. Lee

Review by Hugh Murray

After Lee
Harvey Oswald was arrested in Dallas, he asserted that he was just a
patsy. After Sirhan Sirhan was arrested
in California for the killing of Robert Kennedy, Sirhan proclaimed, “I did it
for my country.” A Bobby enthusiast
reacted in disbelief before television cameras.
How could he say that? After all
Bobby has done for the country! What the
bewildered Democratic activist failed to comprehend was that he and Sirhan were
referring to two different countries.
The Democrat interpreted Sirhan’s words as describing the US. But Sirhan had spoken them meaning Palestine,
the Middle East, where he and his family were born.

There is an
unwillingness by Nolan to admit the obvious.
Sirhan most likely sought to kill Sen. Robert Kennedy because of the Democrat’s
support for Israel. There was no need
for CIA hypnotic sessions, or Manchurian candidate psychological triggers
sparked by a coffee urn or a polka dot dress; Sirhan was aiming to display
Palestinian anger about American politicians and their Middle-Eastern policies.

I recall
speaking with an Arab colleague in New Orleans in 1969 about the murder of Sen.
Kennedy. “Oh, Sirhan is a hero. If he were released, he would be celebrated
in the Middle East!” Nolan provides
information that the night of the murder, Sirhan had 4 Tom Collins and also
appeared drugged. Recall, that we derive
our English word assassin from hashish which was used by murderers of the
Middle East centuries ago. The narcotic
gave us the word assassin, they were so closely linked. Yet, even if drunk and drugged, the reason
for killing may have been rational – to reveal hatred for American
policies. Sirhan probably got his liquor
from the hotel’s political victory parties in that day’s primaries. And Sirhan did not need to get his drugs from any CIA MKULTRA
programs; after all, Sirhan’s brother was then in jail on a drug charge.

Nolan does
present arguments that others were involved in the assassination of Bobby. But the accomplices need not have had any
connection to the CIA, rogues or regulars.
They might have been other Arabs, or they may have been connected to the
Mafia, as John H Davis contended decades
ago.

A third of
the book concerns Oswald and the murder of President Kennedy. The CIA did have various programs which
drugged citizens with LSD and experimented on unsuspecting victims. Certainly, there is ample reason to conclude
that Oswald had connections to the CIA, the FBI, and possibly other government
agencies. However, there is no
convincing reason to think that Oswald was victimized through one of the CIA MKULTRA
programs with hypnotism, drugs, etc.
After his arrest, he did deny bringing curtain rods or a rifle into the
Texas School Depository. That did not
necessarily mean he had been drugged. He
may have simply lied. Many authors have
provided better explanations for Oswald’s behavior, without inserting a Deus ex machina. Generally there are two major alternative
narratives: 1) Oswald was a Marxist who defected to the USSR, returned to the
US, but subscribed to the Communist and Trotskyist newspapers, shot at
conservative Gen. Walker, distributed pro-Castro leaflets, and finally shot
President Kennedy; or 2) Oswald as a Marine studied Russian in the intelligence
service, became a fake defector but lived in the USSR for two years, on his
return pretended to be a Marxist, but was working with right-wing and CIA
operatives like Guy Banister, David Ferrie, and George de Mohrenschildt. Oswald was to obey orders on 22 November
1963, which may have kept him on the 2nd floor lunch room when the
shots killed Kennedy. Thus Oswald was
made to appear guilty by the real assassins.
He was a patsy, and then killed to prevent a trial.

Variations
on these themes dominate the literature.
But did Oswald have to be drugged or drunk or hypnotized to perform his
mission? There is little doubt the CIA
ran some unpleasant programs. A Soviet
defector to the US, whom a leading CIA operative suspected was really a plant,
was tortured for 5 years before the CIA decided the man was honest in his
defection from the Soviet side. Yuri
Nosenko then emerged from his isolation.
But not even Nolan suggests such tortures were inflicted upon Oswald.

One thing I
find most ironic, and the irony is unmentioned by Nolan. For the trial of Sirhan, both the defense and
prosecution had their doctors hypnotize Sirhan.
They hoped to discover details of the night of the assassination that
Sirhan was unable to remember. What I
find fascinating is the dog that did not bark.
Not long before the trial of Sirhan, in New Orleans the District
Attorney Jim Garrison conducted a probe of a plot to kill President Kennedy. To discover more details about who and what
was discussed by the conspirators, he had a key witness hypnotized. There was a media storm of protest – the DA
was attempting to plant false information in the mind of the witness. This notion did much to discredit the
Garrison investigation, and there were articles in the nation media denouncing
the use of hypnotism in judicial proceedings.
Yet, no one seems to have objected when Sirhan was hypnotized! The media was now quiet; the dog did not bark
anymore. Garrison had been discredited,
and there was no further need to use the issue of hypnotism.

Nolan
writes: “It was the McCarthyism of the 1950s that culminated in the
assassinations of the 1960s. JFK and RFK
chose to travel a different path. They
confronted the rabid anti-Communism of their day…because of this, they were cut
down in their prime.”(pp. 10-11)
Unfortunately, McCarthyism is a scapegoat for Nolan. Attacking McCarthyism may comfort liberals,
but is this accurate? Robert Kennedy
worked for Sen. McCarthy’s investigating committee in the 1950s. And when the majority in the US Senate voted
to condemn the junior Senator from Wisconsin, Mass. Senator John Kennedy was
absent and did not vote to condemn McCarthy.

I concede,
anti-Communism may well have contributed to the assassination of Pres.
Kennedy. But I do not see it as a factor
in the killing of his brother. Sirhan
announced he did it for his country. He
was an early example – like the suicide bombers that now plague the neighbors
of Islam. He was contemporaneous with
hijackers for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, etc. Sirhan could not pilot a plane; he could no
longer jockey a horse; but he could alter the political landscape of America
the night Bobby was killed.

Nolan’s
stress on the CIA MKULTRA and other programs and psychological manipulation is
generally unconvincing in relation to Oswald and Sirhan. Yes, the CIA in the 1950s and 60s was
probably involved in coups in various countries like Guatemala, Iran, the
Congo, Vietnam, Indonesia, etc., but it was during the Cold War when the
Soviets were also engaged in trying to change governments to their liking. But this does not mean that the CIA
programmed Oswald and Sirhan to be patsies.
Nolan has written a disappointing book.

My final
criticism of Nolan’s thesis is this – if the CIA were involved in the killing
of the Kennedys, and these CIA conspirators included those whom he identifies, like
high officials James Angleton and Richard Helms, and Helms eventually heads the
CIA, then are they really CIA ROGUES at all?

Monday, March 10, 2014

Science vs. Religion? Or the Myths of Science vs. the Myths of Religion?

by Hugh Murray

With
Fanfare on several networks, a science program debuted in primetime. “Cosmos: A Space-Time Odyssey” appeared on
Fox, National Geographic Channel, FX, and a Fox sports channel. Inspired by the old Carl Sagan science
series, Neil deGrasse Tyson was the host.
The program began with a brief message by Pres. Obama, and I suspect the
series will find its place in many a school classroom for the next decades.

I barely
remember the Carl Sagan series, which was shown on Pubic Television. I do recall that I liked it; learned from it;
was provoked to think by it. It was the
most popular PBS series, and retained that position for a decade. I watched the new Cosmos, and was
disappointed.

The set is
adequate, the special effects, effective, and the host speaks with an
easy-to-understand approach so effective for teaching. The problem is the content. Much of the hour revolved around Italian
thinker Giordano Bruno. A Dominican priest,
he read the ancient poet Lucretius “On the Nature of Things” and decided that
the universe was infinite. Unfortunately,
Bruno also began to question certain doctrines deemed essential to Christian
belief, and even defended the Arian heresy (anti-Trinitarian) on occasion. Warned that charges were being prepared
against him, he fled. In the new Cosmos,
he begins to see the sun as more than the center of what we now call the solar
system, but also as just another star in an infinite universe that would have
many planets with other inhabitants. The
television program rightly asserted that Bruno was rejected by Calvinists in
Geneva, Lutherans in Germany, and by leading churchmen in Oxford. But no mention is made of his success as a
man who developed an excellent method of remembering things. For that, we may have to await a new program
on National Geographic Channel’s “Brain Games.”
Eventually, Bruno returns to Italy, where he is arrested and tried by
the Catholic Inquisition. He was burned
at the stake.

The new Cosmos
program makes a hero of the scientist Bruno – a man who faces exile and is
denied help from Lutheran Germany, Calvinist Switzerland, wavering England, and
who is executed by the Roman Catholic Church in Italy. Science versus religion; the poor scientist
suffers at the hands of the cruel fundamentalist believers. However, the charges against Bruno had little
to do with science, and mainly concerned his rejection of Catholic religious
doctrines like transubstantiation, belief in the Trinity, and the virginity of
Mary. One charge is related to the TV
program: his claim of the existence of a plurality of worlds and their
eternity. If he meant those worlds were
peopled, has that been proven? NO. Are those worlds eternal? How can we answer that? My point is that Bruno was killed for his
religious views, not his scientific ones.
And his “scientific” views on some points were probably no more
scientific than those of Ptolemy. Bruno
was executed not as a martyr to science, but as a victim of religious
intolerance. Yet, at that time in
history, religious intolerance was far more common than religious toleration,
and anyone, in most nations, who openly challenged the orthodox religion in
most lands would be in trouble. The new Cosmos program is guilty of portraying
a conflict between persecuted science and intolerant religion in a false
manner. Bruno was a thinker, a dreamer,
a creative fantasist, but was he a scientist of the cosmos? (He probably was a scientist in developing
methods to improve memory, but that is not at issue.) And if Bruno was not executed for his
science, why is his story the major one on Cosmos?

If the
television program is meant to contrast the approach of science with that of
fundamentalist religion, it fails, because its major portrayal in that hour
fails because Bruno’s fantasies were not
science. Instead of presenting
science versus fundamentalist religion, the program presents scientific
mythology versus Holy Scripture mythology.
Tyson’s voice is authoritative, but he is simply reading sentences. Many others will find the sentences in the
Bible or the Koran to be more authoritative than those uttered by Tyson.

Missing from
the program about science is experiment!
How do you choose this mythology over that or even that one? Sometimes, there may be no rational way to
make a choice. But sometimes, experiment
can help. Indeed, this is one of the
essences of science. I would have begun
the program with a question of how large is the earth? I would have sought to replicate the
experiment of ancients using the length of shadows at noon in one area of
Egypt, then moving a measured length to another site, and measure the shadow
there. Using geometry and calculating
differences, Eratosthenes calculated the circumference of the earth before
Julius Caesar visited Cleopatra. Indeed,
some in the ancient world, like Aristarchus of Samos, believed in the
heliocentric view of the solar system long before Copernicus. One might ask, why was the view of
Aristarchus rejected and that of the earth-centered system accepted for so
long? What made scientists reject the
“four corners of the earth” formulae?
And so forth. Experiment is
essential to science, in the modern world, and was used to some extent in the
ancient world. However, experiment never
seemed to enter the new Cosmos program. In
the new Cosmos, the religious authorities are rejected, but not because of
experiments. Instead they are rejected because
of a new authority, the voice of a scientist, presents a counter narrative with
the aid of special effects. The program is NOT religious mythology
versus science; it is religious mythology versus scientific mythology. Experiment is absent. And the special effects are humdrum in an era
of science fiction movies.

So I see the
new Cosmos series as a failure. It fails
to promote science because it fails to include scientific experiments, their
successes and failures; uses and abuses, and their connections to the comforts
that we now enjoy. Instead, it is a
rather boring presentation.

Sunday, March 2, 2014

My newest comment is posted on the site of the Int. Business Times (UK ed) at the end of an article: "Ukraine's Neo-Fascist...Leader to Run for President," March 7, 2014). My next comment is from a story on RT about pro-Russian protests in eastern Ukraine against the new, Kiev coup "government." Then, from a Yahoo Story "Ukraine mobilises army as West warns Russia" by Dmitry Zakson from AFP about recent events in the Ukraine. The next is a comment by someone else, off-subject, but quite worth repeating. The 2nd is my analogy about events in Ukraine.---Hugh Murrayhu.murray60 (signed in using yahoo)

The Kiev coup klan "government" began by trying to restrict the Russian language, thereby inciting the large Russian minority to rebellion. Crimea is leaving. Will all of eastern Ukraine also secede? The Coup Kiev klan is pushing many provinces out of the nation.

Hugh Murray08.03.2014 17:44

The Kiev coup klan made its hostility to things Russian clear when they immediately enacted a law to restrict the Russian language. It is then natural for Russian-speaking and Russian-cultural areas to object and protest the unelected Kiev coup laws. If Kiev continues with its hostility to the ethnic Russians in Ukraine, then the Kiev coup klan is inviting the break-up of the Ukraine. (post on RT)

RT has become a story itself, when an anchor quit on air, stating that she was an American, and would not report the stories that were pro-Russian on RT, Russia Today, a media arm paid for by the Russian government. She won praise for her integrity by other American journalists. However, one blogger Zaid Jilani for a tax-exempt American Center for American Progress Action Fund to write on national security matters, was condemned by his bosses whenever he wrote something critical of Obama. It may have been tax exempt, but the purpose of the organization was to promote Obama propaganda. Eventually, the writer had to leave the tax exempt organization because he disagreed with Obama's foreign policy. (I assume Lois Lerner's IRS had no problems giving the pro-Obama organization a tax-exempt status, while denying such to conservative groups.) [For more on this story see The Daily Caller's story, March 7, 2014 about White House censorship.]

Imagine drug gangs in Mexico City taking over major government buildings there, setting up their own new "revolutionary government, and threatening the elected Mexican President. That duly-elected Mexican President then flees to the US and asks America for help. If the US then sent in troops to restore the legitimate Mexican government against the self-appointed rebel junta, would you call that a foreign invasion? Or help from a friendly nation seeking to restore legitimate authority against a rebel putsch?
Putin seems to be simply doing that in Ukraine, restoring legitimate authority against the self-appointed leaders of the coup in Kiev.